nucor steel seattle tour

Nucor Steel Plant Tour

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1 session  December 9th  1pm – 3pm

From the frying pan and into the fire!  Get an up close and personal rare view of molten steel being produced.  Tour takes up to 21/2 hours.  Tour starts at 1pm meet up at the guard shack 10″ before.  Late comers may be turned back….don’t be late.  First 15 to sign up get the slots.

· Everyone must be over 18 years old for insurance reasons. Unfortunately, there are no exceptions.

· Please wear long pants (no shorts or skirts) and flat-bottomed, closed-toe, sturdy shoes with socks (no sandals, heels, etc.). We provide hardhats, safety glasses, overcoats, and earplugs.

· The tour takes 1.5 – 2 hours. In order to finish on time, please try to arrive 10 minutes or so early to get signed in.

· There are no bags or purses permitted inside the plant. These items should be left in your car or can be checked in at our security office.

· There are no pictures or video recording permitted on the tour.

· The tour requires over a mile of walking and ascending and descending several sets of stairs. We ask that everyone please consider if they are able to do this comfortably ahead of time.

· Visitors will be asked to present picture ID when signing in. Please make sure to bring this with you. Directions to the plant are included below. If you would like directions to the plant from another direction, please let me know.

Directions to Nucor Steel Seattle: 1. Our plant address is 2424 SW Andover St. Seattle, WA 98106. If you are coming via West Seattle Bridge, take the 1st exit on right after crossing bridge(Delridge Way). Exit spits into two options, stay towards the left side and merge onto Delridge Way. Turn right at the 1st stoplight (SW Andover St.). Our driveway is a few hundred feet down on the right after the intersection. Turn into our driveway and continue straight past the plant entrance until the driveway opens up into a parking lot. There are visitor spots on the left, but feel free to park anywhere and walk back to the main plant entrance and check in at the security building next to the scale.

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Why Nucor Steel, Seattle?

With a firm commitment to our team members, a strong belief in work-life balance and a variety of other benefits and performance incentives, it’s easy to see why Nucor is cited as one of the best employers in the United States.

We work together to create a safe, positive and engaging environment for each other, while delivering the highest quality products and service for our customers. Joining our team means working with people who have your back and are invested in helping you build a strong future. 

BEST BENEFITS IN THE BUSINESS

Medical and dental are just the beginning. We value our employees and offer benefits packages that also include profit sharing, retirement savings, life/work balance, scholarships and tuition reimbursement, unlimited growth potential and a no-layoff practice.

Safety First

The motto "Safety First" guides everything we do, every day.

Safety is smart business.  Taking care of our customers begins with taking care of the teammates  who get the job done.

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Tour: Nucor Steel

We are excited to promote the next installment in our Making and Materials Tour Series, a trip to Nucor Steel!

Nucor is a steel and steel product manufacturer that has generously opened their doors to us for the third year in a row to see how it’s all done. If you have any interest in the process of making steel, you like giant pits of fire, or have a mild obsession with massive robots, this tour is for you! Make sure you register by Friday, July 10th! Space is limited.

Cost:  $5 for AIA & YAF members, $15 for non-members

Please Note : You must be over 18 for this tour. Please wear closed-toed shoes, socks, long pants, and be prepared to do some stair climbing!

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Reduce, Reuse, Rebar: Tour of Nucor Steel Mill

Fri, May 10, 2019 from 9:30am - 12pm

NUCOR Steel, founded in 1905 is the largest steel producer and recycler (of any material) in North America. Right in West Seattle a Nucor steel mill is turning out rebar by the ton and although it’s used in almost every construction project in the city most people aren’t aware that this industrial steel is produced in their own backyards. 

Join us in “Little Pittsburg” for a tour of NUCOR’s mill and learn about the fiery work of metal processing. We’ll don safety suits and steel ourselves with some tasty donuts before forging onto the manufacturing floor. 

Plant Rules that will keep you safe & happy:

• No open toed shoes, sturdy boots preferred
• Long pants or jeans required
• 18 years and up (Photo ID is required at check-in)
• Participants are able to comfortably navigate multiple flights of stairs and walk nearly one mile

Nucor Steel

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• Pacific NW Magazine

Efficient, agile, smart, Seattle’s steel mill keeps the fires burning

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MOST OF the callers, having never felt the big heat, really don’t understand. The newbies can be forgiven: They probably bought an overpriced hillside condo based on some Web-propagated Emerald City fantasy, only to learn that Seattle’s Youngstown neighborhood has an industrial reality predating the neighborhood itself.

Miffed by an occasional noise, a late-night shower of sparks or a lingering steam cloud often mistaken for smoke, they’ll dial up Nucor Steel and get routed to Bart Kale, the safety and environmental manager — and also the Keep the Neighbors Happy Guy. Like any good conflict-avoidance person, he starts by listening.

“I didn’t understand there was a steel mill down there,” the caller says, the “down there” referring to the former tide flat below the high-arching West Seattle Bridge. “And I certainly didn’t understand that it ran 24 hours a day. This is Seattle. How can that be?”

Kale is patient.

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“We have a conversation about how we’ve been here for more than 100 years,” he says. “People usually are accepting of that. But I’m amazed at how many people don’t realize that we’re here.”

It is shocking, yes, but in the land of vexing software and fancy coffee, Seattle still produces stuff that a sledgehammer can’t dent. Big stuff. Hot stuff. Hold-up-the-Tacoma-Narrows-Bridge stuff.

It’s not just coming from Nucor Steel. A couple dozen other manufacturing industries continue to churn away along the Duwamish and into downtown, providing a little-appreciated bedrock of the economy for Seattle and the Puget Sound region. Washington manufacturing companies grind out $154 billion in gross revenues a year; they employ 27,000 workers in Seattle alone, according to the Manufacturing Industrial Council of Seattle.

Perspective: That’s about 12 times what the supposed business colossus National Football League earns in a season, right down to T-shirts and trinkets. Seattle’s hard-hat sector is an underdog dynamo, one that has managed to compete against considerable odds in the vaunted global marketplace.

Most of it clatters along 24/7 to little fanfare. For a great many locals, the only clue of Nucor’s existence comes on an early-morning or late-evening drive across the West Seattle Bridge: A steam plume rises to the south, and below it, long billets of freshly extruded steel, still glowing fire red, creep out from beneath a massive metal roof, on their way to providing structural support for something impressive.

It’s tempting to employ the cliché and suggest that Nucor Steel, the state’s oldest and most prolific recycler, is not your grandfather’s steel mill. But it actually is. Some of the 320 workers, in fact, are third-generation employees. The technology to melt down scrap steel for new uses is hardly new. How does Seattle’s hidden-in-plain-sight steel mill compete?

Guile, mostly. And constant refinement. Just as it did a century ago, steel still melts at about 3,000 degrees. But over the years, Seattle’s steel mill has evolved into one of the most efficient in the world, recycling steel more productively than competitors.

Ask any of the workers who feed the furnace at Nucor: When hot steel is flowing, you’ve got to be fast on your feet.

ASIDE FROM the challenges of competing with steel produced in Asia, Seattle’s steel plant, built in 1905 by local industrialist William Pigott, of Paccar fame, and a partner, has long faced the unique problem of fitting in with its increasingly gentrified urban neighborhood.

Sited for the obvious advantages of rail, river and seaport access, the plant that opened as Seattle Steel sat, for the first half of the 20th century, largely by itself, surrounded by forested slopes. The mill has had numerous owners, operating over the years as Pacific Coast Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Seattle Steel (again) and Birmingham Steel before its assets were acquired by Nucor in 2002.

The neighborhood — called at various times Little Pittsburgh and Youngstown because it attracted workers from the nation’s Midwest steel belt — grew up around the mill. Some of the housing was built by the steel company itself, creating a sort of “company town” within the city.

The plant’s current owners have seen a neighborhood housing boom during their tenure; they take seriously the responsibility of making nice with neighbors. A key part of the company’s strategy is transparency — letting locals in to see, literally, what goes on behind the steel curtain of one of Seattle’s original heavy industries.

It’s not widely advertised, but neighborhood people know that anybody can call and arrange a tour, in groups of five to 10.

“We just go through the mill,” Kale says. “There’s some pretty spectacular parts of it. People leave here . . . well, they’re not bored. There’s melting steel and all that kind of stuff.”

That might be the undersell of the century.

Nucor’s tour begins in the yard where scrap steel, “anything that sticks to a magnet,” is sorted into piles. This is the ending place for much of the recycled metal — cans, cars, old appliances, engine blocks, recycled buildings and rebar, you name it — from a broad swath of the Northwest. It arrives by truck or rail after being processed by recyclers such as Seattle Iron and Metal, just up the Duwamish River.

Most of this occasionally noisy process takes place out of site, under a sprawling shed roof that the company installed at a cost of more than $1 million after purchasing the plant. Acoustic baffling material keeps down the noise.

Beneath the roof, a crane swivels around the yard, dropping Volkswagen-sized electromagnets that pick up tons of scrap at a time with the push of a button. The crane operator mixes and matches scrap of varying composition, depending on what grade of steel is being produced, to move into the melt shop next door.

It’s slightly mesmerizing, watching hundreds of tons of metal flung around like piles of Q-tips. But nothing compared to what comes next.

INSIDE THE melt shop, an electric-arc furnace (think of a Paul Bunyan-sized Dutch oven) filled with molten liquid receives loads of scrap heated by red-hot, carbon-graphite electrodes. An operator, perched in a glass-encased booth above and about 30 yards away, controls the process by computer.

The electrodes, as the name implies, run on electricity, and it’s no exaggeration to say that when they’re switched on, dials dip at Seattle City Light. Even though this plant uses far less energy than competitors, Nucor is City Light’s largest single customer. The company in 2013 consumed more than 377 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, according to City Light. That’s enough to power 42,000 typical Seattle homes.

Most of the time, the electrodes do their work beneath a heavy cover over the furnace. But every 10 minutes into a production cycle, the lid slides briefly open, offering a squint-inducing view inside what’s equal parts fiery beautiful and fiery hell.

Seconds later, an overhead crane bucket delivers another “charge” of scrap steel to the vat. Grab onto something for this: When fresh metal meets molten stew, a magnificent fireball billows from the furnace, producing a heat wave that’s felt even behind the protective glass of the control booth.

The melted steel is poured out and extruded into still-glowing billets, which are blasted with cooling water and cut into sections by torches. This is the red-glowing rail that motorists see from above. The cooling process also produces the plant’s most-visible discharge: steam.

When business is good, the steel rolls out around the clock: 135 tons per hour, up to 800,000 tons a year. Some of it is exported in this form, some rolls on to be reheated and shaped to various products on the premises. Nucor makes 16 grades of steel in five shapes, 150 products in all.

Where does it all go? Beneath your feet, all around you and over your head. About 85 percent of Nucor’s output is structural rebar, ranging from the half-inch widths you buy at Home Depot to the 2¼-inch bars that hold up bridges and buildings. Seattle steel helped build the former World Trade Center. It’s found in foundations for a majority of Northwest homes and every major construction project in the region, ranging from the Space Needle to the ongoing downtown tunnel project.

YOU MIGHT expect that producing all that steel would create an immense quantity of unwanted byproducts. You would be half right. Everything that results from the process gets reused.

Steel slag — metallic impurities that rise to the top of the melt by introducing lime — is skimmed off, broken up and sold as aggregate for asphalt. (Because of its gripping properties, it’s particularly popular with NASCAR.)

Dust that flies up from the furnace is collected in filters in an immense vacuum system. It contains a lot of zinc, which is collected and sold. “Mill scale,” the flakes of steel produced as steel oxidizes, is sold to concrete makers as a strengthening agent. Water, which cools everything in the plant, is treated and reused. The plant has no wastewater discharge.

All of this makes Nucor the most-prolific recycling operation in the state. It also helps explain the company’s success in a hypercompetitive global steel market.

With 19 mills nationwide, Nucor grew into North America’s largest steel producer by refining age-old processes, upgrading plants with new production schemes.

Seattle-made steel, produced with renewable hydropower, has what’s likely the world’s lowest carbon footprint of any steel in the world, the company boasts. Comparable factories in China consume seven to eight times the amount of power to produce the same product.

Beyond that, says plant general manager Matt Lyons, the company has remained competitive through lean times in two ways: It outsteps its competitors by being nimble enough to retool quickly to produce smaller amounts of specialty products. And it has reinvested in its facility and workforce during frequent economic dips.

UNLIKE MANY competitors, Nucor didn’t slash its workforce as the plant dropped to about 65 percent capacity at the depth of the recent recession (it has since recovered to a slowly rising level of about 80 percent). In fact, the parent company, which has 22,000 employees nationally, hasn’t laid anyone off since 1967.

Instead, Nucor in 2009 plowed $500 million into employee-retention programs. It kept workers busy with plant maintenance and upgraded their skills through training.

Worker pay, of course, drops along with profits as the plant sits idle. Nucor, a nonunion employer, uses a performance-based pay system that’s becoming commonplace in heavy industry. Only about a third of workers’ salaries is base pay, the rest determined by plant production.

When business is good, or even OK, it’s happy times for workers. Nucor Seattle’s 320 workers make an average of $85,000 to $90,000 a year — before benefits. Entry-level workers average in excess of $60,000 a year.

Not surprisingly, those rates have made workers intensely loyal to the company: One has popped on the hard hat and goggles here for 40 years. Lyons himself is a third-generation employee of the mill, which looks at its employees “like family,” he says.

Nucor’s workforce is aging, and retirements have caused the company to look harder for both skilled and unskilled workers. The plant has hired many Navy-nuclear electricians, and participates in the local “Core-Plus” program to train and recruit willing high-school graduates who appreciate Nucor’s rare, living-wage blue-collar jobs.

The company’s employment rolls are currently “a little bit heavy,” on purpose Lyons says. “We’re trying to capture some of that tribal knowledge before people leave.”

NOT EVERYONE, of course, is thrilled to have Seattle’s steel mill in their backyard. At various times throughout the city’s history, neighbors have seized the issuance of permits, or changes in ownership, to urge that the big plant just go away.

And managers of many Seattle heavy manufacturers have long grumbled that local politicians seem to be making the challenge of maintaining an industrial base inside city limits more difficult.

Despite its role as an important economic engine, Nucor’s management team laughs out loud at the notion they’ll get state or local tax breaks to help make ends meet, like one notable local aerospace company does.

The plant, in fact, gets few handouts. City Light once gave the mill a discount on power; no more. The plant pays the standard rate for industrial users, one that’s increased by about 20 percent in the past decade and keeps going up.

Also, Nucor and other heavy-industry companies felt overlooked in the recent debate about mandating a a citywide $15 minimum wage. The boost threatened to blow up successful performance-pay ratios that allow manufacturing workers to earn net pay that’s higher than minimum wage, even though some entry-level workers might make less than $15 an hour in base pay. Ongoing negotiations should allow companies with Nucor-style pay structures to comply with any new law, and continue to provide the very sort of quick-advancing, high-paying, blue-collar jobs the city says it wants, says Dave Gering of the Manufacturing Industrial Council.

Even with those challenges, Nucor stands as a strong example of community compromise. Employees are proud of their in-city mill. And some neighbors throw the love right back, even accepting the plant as part of their own comfort zones.

Years ago, in the throes of another transition, the company stopped making railroad tie plates, which it had supplied to most of the nation’s railroads for nearly a century. The punch shears that produced those plates emitted a loud ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk audible nearby.

When it unexpectedly ceased one day, an elderly local woman called — to complain about the lack of noise.

“I can’t sleep at night now,” she said. The white noise of those punch shears had rocked her to sleep for most of her life.

That’s why most complaints that roll in now seem to be from newcomers, Kale says. And that’s OK.

“Other people sort of look at it as the rhythm of the neighborhood.”

Ron Judd is a Pacific NW magazine staff writer. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.

Other Tangents

A visit to the nucor steel plant.

A crew from Board & Vellum took a trip to tour Seattle’s NUCOR Steel plant recently to understand what goes into this critical building material that keeps our buildings standing up while almost never being seen. Jeff Sandler reports back with all the details from this illuminating trip to Seattle’s “Little Pittsburgh.”

Jeff Sandler

February 17, 2015.

You might ask why an architecture firm working predominately in single-family residential is interested in steel. Looking around your house you might say, “I don’t even see any steel here.” But the reality of home construction can be deceiving. The wood framing members are joined by steel nails and nailer plates. You may have steel windows depending on the age and budget of your house. Some of your homes may even have steel structural members at particularly large openings, heavily-loaded columns in your basement, or if you have a large cantilever hanging out past the line of your foundation. These elements are all covered and concealed. Additionally, there is one major steel component unseen by most unless you kick around the job site while your foundation is being poured, rebar.

Steel rebar allows us to rely on our concrete foundations, slabs, and walls. Concrete is a wonderfully strong material in compression (think crushing) but fails quickly and easily in tension (think pulling apart). Since building are subjected to constantly fluctuating conditions—whether moisture, temperature, or loading—things move. We like to use concrete in compression but because of fluctuating conditions and some principles of structures concrete elements are sometimes stretched, pulled, or bent, and then we need steel!

Steel rebar can be found in almost all modern applications of concrete. Round bars are bound to one another with wire and assembled into cages that are floated within the concrete while it hardens. After the concrete has cured, the steel is permanently set. Ribbing or texture on the outside of the bars acts like teeth to bite into the hardened concrete and keep it from cracking apart while subjected to pulling and bending.

An invaluable resource for architects and other professionals in the construction industry is to physically handle materials and see how they are made. Luckily for us, we have a top-notch steel plant in West Seattle producing over 800,000 tons of steel products annually, of which 85% is rebar. Knowing this, a crew from Board & Vellum took a trip to tour Seattle’s NUCOR Steel plant recently to  understand what goes into this critical building material that keeps our buildings standing up while almost never being seen.

Just over the West Seattle Bridge in a n area affectionately called Little Pittsburgh, NUCOR has been rolling out steel products since 1904. Since then, this NUCOR location has grown and evolved to produce steel with the most current processes and technologies. Another thing we like about what they do is almost everything from the plant is 100% recycled!

In certain industries, like automotive, requirements are such that only newly produced steel can be used. This is not the case in the building industry. The grade of steel is very high in building products but not so high that it requires virgin steel. In addition, there is so much steel being produced and used in cars, buildings, cans, and other applications that there is a constant supply of scrap steel. Train cars and truckloads drop off heaps of scrap metal all day long every day of the week at NUCOR, and this is where it begins.

Loads of scrap coming from all over the region, including across the border in British Columbia, are delivered to the plant and scanned for radioactive materials or other such contaminants that would make handling dangerous. The safety requirements at NUCOR are so stringent that if there is any radioactive material detected within a train car or truck load, that whole shipment is sent back to where it originated. The safety manager giving us the tour tells us this can happen sometimes multiple times in a day, but it’s all part of keeping workers, end users, neighbors, and the environment safe.

After passing contamination inspection, the scrap metal is hauled to the on-site scrap yard. The scrap yard is an open-air covered region of the plant (one of three covered steel plants in the world) spanning multiple acres. Here large spools of spent cable, car chassis, maritime sprockets, and enormous steel plates are sorted into piles based on metallurgical properties. The yard is managed by a giant gantry crane equipped with two round, pickup-truck-sized electromagnets . From here the material is gathered to start making new rebar and other rolled steel products.

For any given order, a recipe is devised dictated by the requirements of the end product. Each product requires a specific grade of steel and a maximum allowable amount of added alloys. These standards are critical so that we know how structures will perform and can design for those conditions. In the end, this makes our buildings more efficient in terms of material and also in the final price to our clients. The gantry crane operator gathers whatever is needed from the scrap yard and drops the recycled material into a large bucket on its way to the furnace. The furnace is where the real fun begins.

Somewhere between a post-apocalyptic Matrix nightmare and an enormous welding booth, the furnace is almost always running. Our guide puts in perspective the energy required to run this process saying that the monthly electrical bill at NUCOR Seattle is close to $2 million . From behind blast-proof glass we hang out with Phil, the most senior employee at the plant who has been working his way up from the floor for 45 years. Phil is now the senior furnace operator . He sits perched above the melt-house floor in the control station with blue and green plastic shields placed strategically to keep his retinas from burning out the back of his eyes. Here, he uses what looks like a modified fighter plane control to deliver 40,000 lbs. of scrap at a time to the furnace pot. After three payloads are added to the vat, Phil maneuvers a three-headed electrode into the pile to start the melt. The furnace works on the same principle as an arc welder. An electrical current travels to the electrode head and is held off of a conducting material just enough to create an electrical arc which superheats and melts the metal, but in this case there are three electrodes and each is larger than a Seahawks linebacker. Delivering a high dose of electricity and heat to the vat, Phil keeps the furnace around 3200°F. At this temperature, the scrap metal melts completely and can be fully mixed to produce a consistent mixture. During the process Phil pulls levers and hits touch screens that also add various metals and oxygen to purify the mixture. Slag, a byproduct made of impurities is then dumped off the top before the steel mixture is poured into billets in the next step.

The molten steel is formed into billets, large, square-shaped bars cut to different lengths depending on weight needed for a specific order. In order to keep the process continually moving, the cutting mechanism actually travels with the steel as it is being pushed out of the furnace. This way it can take its time cutting accurately while the product is moved out of the furnace, making room for the next superhot batch of steel. Once the billets are formed and cut they have to cool, but not because they are too hot, but because they are not magnetic at high temperatures. Billets are about eight inches square and 32’ long, meaning they weigh roughly 9000 lbs. EACH . To handle these pieces of steel the plant once again needs to use electromagnets, but until the billets cool to a modest 1100°F they cannot be attracted to the magnets, so they sit on a steel track that has cold water lines running through it to keep the entire setup from deforming and dropping all the newly formed billets off the rails. At this point, the billets are also marked with an order number that codes them for what product will be rolled from them in the final stages of the process.

When the billets have cooled to temperatures that allow them to be handled by another set of magnets, they are brought to the finishing building. Here, another furnace reheats the steel to temperatures that make it pliable for forming into end products. Once the billets are glowing a bright orange they are sent through a series of rollers that gradually take the square forms down to round rebar, all the way from 8” squares to rebar that is 3/8” in some cases. We watch this process from another control room that sits overlooking the roller assembly. Behind the controls on this side of the plant is Charlie, Phil’s brother and the second most tenured employee at NUCOR Seattle. Charlie pulls a different set of switches and touchscreens to control the shape change, feed speed, and cutting of the rebar that comes off the line. He tells us the glowing steel is traveling fast and that when this process was worked manually it would sometimes catch a worker and send him clear across the warehouse. This is another point where our guide reiterates the safety measures taken at the plant which include getting workers as far away from hot, moving parts as possible.

In the final steps, the rebar is bundled with coils of wire and tagged for shipping and end use. At this point, the rebar is finally at a temperature that you can touch with bare hands or even stand near without fear for losing your eyebrows as it leaves the plant.

The Board & Vellum trip to NUCOR Steel was fun and valuable. So often in this profession we discuss building materials, lifecycles, and holistic understanding of what we do but are not often able to see the cycle in action or watch the processes that go into what we receive on site. One take-away from our NUCOR visit is that we can all be more committed to understanding the entire lifecycle of our materials and buildings. The supply chain for building steel is almost entirely recycled from the waste stream. In addition, the byproducts from processing the steel are either recovered and disposed of safely (particulates are collected in large dust-hoppers) or collected and used in other industries (slag is solidified and crushed to be used as a higher-performing road pavement alternative to asphalt). These big-picture ideas are ones to consider in making better performing buildings.

We thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon at NUCOR and suggest that if you are at all interested in seeing the process for yourself that you schedule a free tour as well!

(Photo Credit: Mike Siegel/Seattle Times)

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WW-ASME Presents: Nucor Steel Seattle Plant Tour

Fri Apr 05 2024 at 10:00 am to 12:00 pm

Nucor Steel Seattle | Seattle, WA

Join knowledgeable and passionate long-time employees on this behind-the-scenes plant tour.

This is an on-site tour of Nucor Steel's Seattle plant, an electric arc furnace facility that melts scrap steel and utilizes continuous casting to produce steel rebar and merchant shapes consisting of angle, flats, and channel.

This steel plant, founded by the Piggott Family of PACCAR fame, was built in 1904 and started making steel in 1905. It was originally run as the Seattle Rail Car Company and then under several different names until the 1920s, when it was purchased by Bethlehem Steel. In the 1980s, it was sold to Seattle Steel, then to Birmingham Steel in 1991. When Birmingham Steel filed for bankruptcy in 2002, Nucor Steel purchased the assets.

Nucor Steel Seattle is a member of the Nucor Bar Mill Group. The facility near the Duwamish River, once proclaimed as “Seattle’s Little Pittsburgh,” has provided steel locally and for shipment throughout the Pacific Northwest, northern California, and Canada.

To supply its mills, Nucor uses electric arc furnaces and continuous casting to melt scrap steel as opposed to blast furnaces to melt iron. In 2023, the company produced and sold approximately 18.5 million tons of steel and recycled 18.4 million tons of scrap.

Feature Video: Grow Here 2016 - Nucor Steel Seattle

Limit 9 participants. Register via free Eventbrite tickets for this tour.

Tour Requirements:

• All participants must be over 18 years old due to insurance reasons, and unfortunately, no exceptions can be made.
• Everyone must wear long pants that cover to the ankle without rips or tears, along with flat-bottomed, closed-toe, sturdy shoes with socks (no shorts, skirts, or capris). Hardhats, safety glasses, overcoats, and earplugs will be provided.
• The tour is anticipated to last 1.5 to 2 hours. To ensure punctuality, kindly arrive 10-15 minutes early for the sign-in process and to be fitted with personal protective equipment (PPE).
• The tour involves approximately 1.25 miles of walking, including ascending and descending several sets of stairs. Please ensure everyone can comfortably navigate this beforehand.
• Unfortunately, due to insurance constraints, the use of canes, walkers, or wheelchairs cannot be accommodated at this time.
• Bags or purses are not allowed inside the plant. Please leave these items in your car or check them in at our security office.
• Photography and video recording are not permitted during the tour.
• Visitors are required to present a valid picture ID during the sign-in process, so be sure to bring it with you.

Directions to Nucor Steel Seattle:

• The plant address is 2424 SW Andover St. Seattle, WA 98106.
• Traveling via West Seattle Bridge from I-5, take the Delridge Way SW exit.
• Exit splits into two options, stay to the left land and merge onto Delridge Way.
• Turn right at the 1st stoplight (SW Andover St.).
• Nucor's driveway is 200 hundred feet down on the right after the intersection. At the Nucor sign turn right, continue forward past the guard shack to the Large Nucor sign and gated entrance.
• Please park in the visitor spaces at the entrance on the left.
• Follow the yellow pedestrian walkway to the tan building with the metal statue in front, this is where you will get your safety gear and a badge for entrance. Feel free to take selfies with this metal guy!!

Where is it happening?

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

Host or Publisher Western Washington ASME

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• Nucor Steel Plant Tour
• When March 06, 2015
•   10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
• Location 2424 SW Andover St. Seattle, WA 98106
• Spaces left 0

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2424 SW Andover St

Seattle, WA 98106

S 26th Ave & S Delridge Way

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Steel is what made America. Now over the years this place has been called many names but in the end it's a steal factory. As a kid I'll always will remember the Christmas Star on the building. I will always have fond memory's when America use to celebrate Christmas as Christmas. God Bless steal & God bless America .

When one is driving Eastbound on the West Seattle bridge, or better yet if one is a passenger in a such a car, if you look down to your right before crossing over the river, you sometimes can see glowing orange bands of steel coming out of a plant. It took me ages to notice this, and once I did, I was fascinated. I became curious as to what was going on down there, and kept thinking of those old Sesame Street short films about how things are made. And then I thought how cool it would be to take a tour of the steel mill. And guess what? You can. I was fortunate enough to have a band-mate who worked there, but because these guys want good PR anyone over the age of 18 can call up and get a tour. While it might look like a big nasty factory on the outside, inside it is actually an amazingly cool recycling plant. See mountains of smashed things picked up by giant magnets! See huge vats of red hot metal being poured (if the crane is working that day). Watch giant slabs of metal be squeezed down into thin pieces of re-bar. This is an excellent field trip for grown-ups.

I can tell you this about Nucor, They have great peeps working for them. I have done business with Their sales Rep and Ken was a super straight shooter with zero BS. Mike

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Nucor Steel Seattle

2424 SW Andover St, Seattle , Washington 98106 USA

• Independent
• More in Seattle

No Longer Maintained

This location is no longer maintained in Roadtrippers. Please confirm location details before visiting.

Learn more about this business on Yelp .

Reviewed by Frank B.

Steel is what made America. Now over the years this place has been called many names but in the end it's a steal factory. As a kid I'll always will remember the Christmas Star on the building. I... Read more

Reviewed by Dawn R.

When one is driving Eastbound on the West Seattle bridge, or better yet if one is a passenger in a such a car, if you look down to your right before crossing over the river, you sometimes can see... Read more

Reviewed by Michael R.

I can tell you this about Nucor, They have great peeps working for them. I have done business with Their sales Rep and Ken was a super straight shooter with zero BS. Mike Read more

View 3 reviews on

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NUCOR Steel Plant Tour and Lunch with ACI UW

ACI’s UW chapter has put together another great opportunity for a project tour. On Friday, 2/21 @ 9 AM, 30 students will have the opportunity to go tour the NUCOR steel plant in West Seattle. If you’ve taken CEE 337, you’ve most likely seen photos of this plant in our steel lectures. This is your chance to go see the electric arc furnace and observe the steel making process from one of the top producers of steel in our area.

You’ll be responsible for your own transportation and PPE. NUCOR will provide you with flame retardant jackets. And there’s FREE LUNCH! 

For more info and to sign up for this tour, go here .

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This steel plant, founded by the Piggott Family of PACCAR fame, was built in 1904 and started making steel in 1905. It was originally run as the Seattle Rail Car Company and then under a number of different names until the 1920s, when it was purchased by Bethlehem Steel. In the 1980s, it was sold to Seattle Steel, then to Birmingham Steel in 1991. When Birmingham Steel filed for bankruptcy in 2002, Nucor Steel purchased the assets. Nucor Steel Seattle is a member of the Nucor Bar Mill Group. The facility near the Duwamish River, once proclaimed as “Seattle’s Little Pittsburgh,” has provided steel locally and for shipment throughout the Pacific Northwest, northern California, and Canada. The mill has the flexibility to produce 1.1 million tons of steel each year—primarily rebar and merchant shapes consisting of angle, flats, and channel.  Join knowledgeable and passionate long-time employees on this behind-the-scenes plant tour.

Because this is a working plant, those registering must adhere to the following plant insurance restrictions and requirements: age restriction: 18 years or older; everyone must wear long pants and sturdy shoes (no open toes, heels, or sandals); everyone must be physically able to climb up and down numerous staircases at a reasonably brisk pace.

This tour is SOLD OUT.

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